What is the first major disaster you remember

[Shmoigel]

The first one I clearly remember was the King’s Cross fire in 87 and Lockerbie in 88

Tell me yours

Me too.

Like many others, Lockerbie, Zebbrugge, the storm of 1987 all stick in my mind (I'd have been 7/8). Also Hillsborough a couple of years later.

Turns out 1987-1989 was a bad period for disasters!

Hillsborough I think then Heysel stadium- It was my birthday on Hillsborough- Dad picked me up from my part time job and it was on the radio in the car. I remember thinking how horrible and the timing of it being my birthday- proper shocking and the newpapers and the news on TV was terrible,

Although I was very young, the Lockerbie bombing stayed with me because we had been passengers on the Clipper Maid of the Seas, the aircraft that crashed, about three weeks before. It was my first transatlantic flight, in fact the first time my family has ever flown I think. I vividly remember seeing her name through the terminal window before we boarded, and thinking how wonderfully thrilling and romantic it sounded.

Dunblane. I was 6 and about an hour away. My grandparents pulled me out of school because nobody knew if it was an isolated incident (and my mother is a bit of a drama queen!)

I would probably have been just old enough to remember Aberfan, but knowing my parents, I guess they made sure I didn't watch the tv news or see the newspaper at all. They would have done all they could to hide that sort of tragedy from me.

Maybe in those days it was easier to shield small children from bad news stories.

Iranian Embassy siege was the first big news story I really remember.

I was 10 years old and my dad pointed to the TV and said 'Look, you're seeing history in the making', but I wasn't really interested at that age.

Bloody Sunday in Derry. I was 4.

Aberfan

Challenger Disaster 1986.

We were doing a topic about space in school and watching a weekly BBC Schools programme about it. It was cancelled that week, but there was no way of updating the schedule, so we all sat patiently, cross-legged on the floor while the TV was rolled in, only for there to be an announcement "Due to the Challenger disaster, this week's episode of (whatever the programme was called) has been postponed."

I remember seeing the aftermath of the Brixton riots in 1981. I was 7.

I was going to say the Grand Hotel bombing in Brighton in 1984, but I also remember the Iranian Embassy siege. I was eight.

Chernobyl

Slightly different, but PC Yvonne Fletcher being gunned down in the street. I recall clearly a reporter musing whether people would remember her name. I resolved there and then that I would.

Lockerbie - I was 6. We travelled from London to Scotland fairly regularly for the time to visit my gran, and I remember “knowing” it was somewhere we passed

The first one that really affected me was 9/11. I came back from an appraisal ‘lunch’ with my line manager to her manager saying “They’re bombing the US, the World Trade Centre is down!!” We all gathered around a TV someone had set up in our department for the rest of the afternoon. Sad and bizarre.

Aberfan - I can remember my very stiff upper lip mum crying while watching the news

9/11

The Herald of Free Enterprise ferry disaster.
The headmistress asked what was special about "today" and a boy said "the Townsend Thoreson disaster?" And the headmistress said, "no, it's St David's Day."
I was 6 and I remember thinking eeeeeeeek.

I didnt grow up in the UK. But it was a big storm in Denmark in 1978. I was odly talking to my oldest and her fiance about it today it took 5 meters of coast. One day you could drive down to the beach the next I was standing at a sudden drop from where the road was. I can remember feeling scared. I was 8.

Isle of Man Summerland fire, 1973. I was only young but family are from IoM so it registered as something very sad the grownups were talking about.

Dunblane I think.

Not a disaster as such but the Cuba crisis in 1961. I remember being terrified and would put my hands over my ears when my parents were watching the news.

Amazing how reading some of these take you right back to where you were when it happened.

the earliest tragedy I remember Jamie bulgar, or more I remember my mothers change in parenting and her fear for my younger sibling.

More clearly I remember the death of Princess Diana, 9/11, the Boxing Day tsunami and the 7/7 bombings

Dunblane. I can remember coming home with a friend and my mum telling us what happened. We lived in a small town in Scotland where people didn't lock their doors and suddenly we had a secure entry system fitted throughout the school